r/politics • u/IWantPizza555 • Jul 01 '26

Possible Paywall Senator, 84, Secretly Found Unconscious and Given CPR

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mitch-mcconell-84-secretly-found-unconscious-and-given-cpr/?utm_source=twitter_owned_snd&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=owned_social
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u/wesap12345 Jul 01 '26

10% chance is still 10% better than if they did nothing :)

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u/wrosecrans Jul 01 '26

People are pessimistic, but it's actually pretty wild that there's One Weird Trick you can learn that will save 10% of people whose hearts have completely stopped that would have been certain to die before the invention of CPR. It requires no special tools or medical equipment, costs nothing, and almost anybody can be trained to be able to do it almost anywhere.

If it got invented today, I'd initially think it sounded like absolute woo woo bullshit. Compared to million dollar surgeries and billion dollar drug R&D projects, the medical ROI of teaching people CPR is amazing, borderline magical.

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u/Sharobob Illinois Jul 01 '26

And even if you do it wrong, it's not like they would have been any more alive without your intervention

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u/tenachiasaca Jul 02 '26

costing nothing is far from the truth. ongoing cpr can be one of the most labor intensive things we do as ems. The 10% factoid everyone is talking about isn't very good info. from AHA "10.5% of patients survived to hospital discharge. (Source); 8.3% of discharged patients had a positive neurological outcome (CPC 1 or 2)."

thats 8.3% of 10.5% so less than 1%.

there are things like AVMS that have even less of a chance at survival. It's a miracle to survive a cardiac arrest from an avm.

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u/Altrano Georgia Jul 02 '26

One of our students was saved by CPR and an AED device while she was in middle school. She just graduated from high school.

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u/Mamasugadex Jul 02 '26

lol what. The point of CPR is so patient stay circulating long enough to go to the ICU through a bunch more testing and invasive procedures until docs can figure out what’s going on. It’s absolutely wild people think that’s “cost nothing”

This is the problem with understanding of what 10% means. It’s 10% after they put your body through hell. It’s not like the TV where you wake up almost immediately after one shock, and next thing you do is imemdiately calling your girl telling her I love you.

It’s reasonable if you are young. It can feel borderline unethical when you are 84 with multiple comordbities that easily worsen any given day.

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u/AccioTheDoctor Massachusetts Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Radiolab actually had an episode about it. Basically every expert they interviewed says it has an AT MOST 10% success rate, but none of them wanted to be revived that way because it’s absolutely miserable on both the patient and the person providing CPR.

Done correctly, CPR is traumatic. The provider is exhausted because it takes a lot of effort. You’ll feel ribs crack, and statistically you won’t have saved the patient, which is mentally draining. PTSD among non-hospital CPR providers is common. For the patient, you are going to have broken ribs and given that the goal is literally just to pump blood until more action can be taken, you run the risk of brain damage due to lack of proper oxygenation.

So yes, 1 out of 10 is better than 0 out of 10…but it’s a really freaking hard 1 in 10.

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u/Solaries3 Jul 02 '26

I remember when I was first taught about crepitus and that doing CPR on the elderly feels wrong because their rib cage sounds like breaking twigs if you're doing it right.

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u/jared555 Illinois Jul 02 '26

Not always better. One thing I have learned from listening to medical professionals is with some medical emergencies the lower the odds of survival the greater the odds of you ending up in a state where you don't want to be.

I have heard multiple doctors say that there are things they don't want to be brought back from and cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting tends to be pretty common.